Tuesday, 30 August 2011

Croatia "kidnaps" Marco Polo

I love these kind of stories, everybody has a right on his own hero !

Former president visiting China praises “traveller from Korčula” who brought two worlds together

The Hina press agency reports that former Croatian president Stjepan Mesić has inaugurated a museum dedicated to Marko Polo in the Chinese city of Yangzhou. That’s right, “Marko” Polo with a “k”. Mr Mesić paid solemn tribute to the “Croatian-born world traveller who opened China to Europe” and, apparently, the Chinese applauded. If ever proof were needed that the Italian authorities don’t know what they are doing, this is it. How could they possibly let anyone kidnap Marco Polo? Yet the myth of the Venetian trader and traveller’s “Croatianness” is not new. According to Alvise Zorzi, who has written a shelf’s worth of books on Venice, including one on Marco Polo, traces the story back to another legend, which claims that the Venetian traveller was captured by the Genoese in a sea battle in 1298 near the island of Curzola – "Korčula” in Croatian – off the Dalmatian coast. Zorzi dismisses this version: “It seems more likely that on one of his travels, Marco Polo ended up in the hands of the Genoese off the coast of Cilicia at Laiazzo [today Ayas in Turkey - Trans.]”.

This, however, is not the point. Even if Marco Polo had by some chance been born at Curzola (Italo Calvino was born in Havana but no one would dream of calling him a “Cuban writer”), the island that Croatians now call “Korčula” was culturally Venetian, as is obvious from the old town, the Marcian Lions over the doors and the cathedral of St Mark. In fact, it was held in fief by the Zorzi family until the fifteenth century.

To claim that Marco Polo, or indeed any other resident of Curzola at that time, was Croatian simply because the island is in Croatia today, is to stretch history perilously far. By the same token, the ancient episcopate of Thagaste in Numidia is today called Souk Ahras, and is located in Algeria, so St Augustine was an Algerian philosopher. Septimius Severus, born in Roman Leptis Magna, a short distance from modern-day Al Khums in Tripolitania, would be a Tripolitanian emperor while Justinian was born in what is now Zelenikovo in Macedonia, so he would be Macedonian, or if you like Turkish, since he governed from the present-day Istanbul. To say nothing of the well-known French patriot, Nice-born Giuseppe Garibaldi.

Ridiculous. As if that wasn’t enough, Zorzi goes on, Marco Polo never mentions Curzola in Il Milione. He dictated his memoirs while languishing in a Genoese prison to Rustichello da Pisa, a composer of chivalrous romances, which at that time were written in langue d’oïl (as was Marco Polo’s book, originally entitled Le livre de Marco Polo citoyen de Venise, dit Million, où l'on conte les merveilles du monde). Moreover, Curzola is nowhere mentioned in the Polo family archives in Venice.

There is plenty of archive material – births, deaths, marriages, wives, wills and so on – from which to trace the impeccably Venetian roots of the Polo family, which was almost certainly resident in the San Trovaso district. All you want.

How is it then possible that the Croatian president, if we do not wish to question the Hina agency story picked up by the Rijeka/Fiume-based Italian-language newspaper, La voce del popolo, was invited by the Chinese authorities to inaugurate a museum to the Venetian traveller at Yangzhou, where Marco Polo tells us he was an administrator for the emperor, Kublai Khan, and some years later the missionary Odorico da Pordenone would also reside? How is it possible that the Italian government and diplomatic service allowed someone as incredibly famous among the Chinese as the author of Il Milione to slip through their fingers, to the possible detriment of friendly relations, commerce and tourism? With all due respect for Stjepan Mesić, can we condone his going to China and thanking his hosts for the honour of inaugurating a museum dedicated “to a Croatian-born world traveller who opened China to Europe, and who with his writings also reawakened Europe’s interest in China”? Let us leave to one side nationalist resentment and rancour over the expulsion of 350,000 Italians from Istra [Istria in Italian – Trans.], Kvarner [Quarnero in Italian – Trans.] and Dalmatia. We have already seen, in the former Yugoslavia, what hate can do if its flames are fanned. That’s how it went. End of story. Yet the Yangzhou snub is merely the latest in a long line of “misappropriations” by Zagreb of a cultural heritage that does not belong to Croatia.

Take, for example, the tourist brochures of Split [Spalato in Italian – Trans.], in which Croatian nationalists rechristened the Lion of St Mark a “post-Illyrian Lion”. The same goes for the “tweaked” memorandum given to John Paul II for his 1988 visit to Dalmatia, which prompted the pontiff to say that “Split and Salona [the city’s Roman name - Trans.] have special significance for the development of Christianity in this region, starting from the Croatian age and then in the subsequent Roman period,” as if the Slavs hadn’t arrived in the seventh and eighth centuries but a thousand years earlier. Above all, it goes for the exhibition in the Vatican library inaugurated for the 2000 Jubilee by Franjo Tudjman, who in his effort to obliterate any memory of Venetian-Italian culture called Marco Polo “Croatian by descent and by birth”.

Gian Antonio Stella
22 april 2011

Diplomatic tussle between Croats and Italians over the opening of Yangzhou's new Marco Polo Memorial Hall

Stjepan Mesic, the former president of Croatia, says he was invited by the Chinese to "officially open" the museumYangzhou has opened a new Marco Polo Memorial Hall, a museum dedicated to the 13th century explorer, but a minor tussle has already erupted between Croats and Italians.
Stjepan Mesic, the former president of Croatia, says on his blog that he was invited by the Chinese to "officially open" the museum, and that Chinese officials were "so anxious" to have Mesic open the museum that they moved the ceremony by one day to fit his China itinerary. Mesic was also due at the Boao Forum for Asia and to give lectures at the Chinese People's Institute of Foreign Affairs in Beijing.

Now why on earth would the former Croatian president be opening a Marco Polo museum, you ask? Isn't Marco Polo Italian? No, he was Croatian, says the Croats.

While historians remain divided over the exact birthplace of the explorer, some have suggested that he was born in Curzola, or Korčula, in modern day Croatia. Others believe that he was a descendant of a Dalmatian family which had come from Sibenik, Dalmatia, to Venice in the 11th Century. Sibenik also lies in Croatia today. Putting two and two together, modern-day nationalist Croatians say Marco Polo was not Italian but a Croat.

To claim that Marco Polo, or indeed any other resident of Curzola at that time, was Croatian simply because the island is in Croatia today, is to stretch history perilously far. By the same token, the ancient episcopate of Thagaste in Numidia is today called Souk Ahras, and is located in Algeria, so St Augustine was an Algerian philosopher. Septimius Severus, born in Roman Leptis Magna, a short distance from modern-day Al Khums in Tripolitania, would be a Tripolitanian emperor while Justinian was born in what is now Zelenikovo in Macedonia, so he would be Macedonian, or if you like Turkish, since he governed from the present-day Istanbul. To say nothing of the well-known French patriot, Nice-born Giuseppe Garibaldi.
The paper goes on to slam Italian authorities for sleeping on their job and allowing this to happen:

How is it possible that the Italian government and diplomatic service allowed someone as incredibly famous among the Chinese as the author of Il Milione to slip through their fingers, to the possible detriment of friendly relations, commerce and tourism? With all due respect for Stjepan Mesić, can we condone his going to China and thanking his hosts for the honour of inaugurating a museum dedicated “to a Croatian-born world traveller who opened China to Europe, and who with his writings also reawakened Europe’s interest in China”? Let us leave to one side nationalist resentment and rancour over the expulsion of 350,000 Italians from Istra [Istria in Italian - Trans.], Kvarner [Quarnero in Italian - Trans.] and Dalmatia. We have already seen, in the former Yugoslavia, what hate can do if its flames are fanned. That’s how it went. End of story. Yet the Yangzhou snub is merely the latest in a long line of “misappropriations” by Zagreb of a cultural heritage that does not belong to Croatia.
So did the Chinese really invite Stjepan Mesic to officially open the Marco Polo Memorial Hall? Apparently not. Chinese publications that reported on the opening of the new museum have been careful to say that Mesic was only invited to to attend the inauguration ceremony of the museum alongside Yangzhou mayor Xie Zhengyi (谢正义) and party secretary Wang Yanwen (王燕文)

The Yangzhou Daily gives us a very detailed glimpse of Wang's major talking points at the ceremony:"Wang started by giving Mesic a warm welcome to Yangzhou, and a brief introduction to Yangzhou's history and economic development. She said that Yangzhou is an ancient city with 2,500 years of history and its prosperity in times past has always been linked to its opening up. Marco Polo was an official in Yangzhou for a period of three years, and hence, Yangzhou has special historical ties with Europe, especially Croatia. The Marco Polo Memorial Hall stands as testimony to the friendly ties between the people of Yangzhou and Europe, which includes Croatia. For a long time, many countries in Europe have expressed a willingness to cooperate with Yangzhou in the areas of tourism, culture, economy, etc. Wang Yanwen expressed hopes that Mesic's visit will spur the cooperation between Croatia and Yangzhou in tourism, culture and economy. She also expressed hopes that Mesic would spend more time in Yangzhou just walking around, looking around and collecting lasting impressions."

Did Stjepan Mesic lie outright about his being invited to "officially open" the museum? Or did the Yangzhou officials purposely give Mesic the impression that he was coming to open the Memorial Hall because they were desperate for the attendance of a foreign dignitary? Did they attempt to get in touch with the Italian Consulate-General in Shanghai at all? These are questions we hope will be answered in the days ahead.

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Hans van Roon

About Me

My fascination for these subjects started in the '80 's by reading the book of Peter Hopkirk about the travels and explorations of Aurel Stein in Central Asia at the beginning of the 20th century.
Over the Silk Road through Central Asia, the Taklamakan Desert, Bokhara and Samarkand I arrived in the 13th century and followed the building of a world empire by Genghis Khan, his sons and grandsons.
His most famous grand son was Khubilai Khan and with him I ended in the Yuan Dynasty in the time when Marco Polo visited China and since than I never stopped reading again

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